I would say yes. We have, at any one time, 5,000 lobbyists registered in the registry, and more than 8,000 in any given year because people are registering and deregistering as they need to.
The questions come into the office as to whether they can do certain activities before they embark on them. They're coming to us and asking, “Can we do these activities? Am I going to find myself in breach or not?” Those have increased and that to me is a sign that lobbyists are taking very seriously the role they play in our democratic process.
That rule or principle that was put into the new code was largely to assure Canadians and public office holders that these individuals were respecting democratic institutions because my experience was that lobbyists were doing so.
The code has two purposes. One is to provide lobbyists with guidance to ensure that they are behaving ethically, but it's also there to ensure that public office holders can know what behaviours to expect and Canadians can look at this and say these things are being done to the highest of standards. The lobbyists are respecting their democratic institutions and so on. They take this seriously. It's in their code.